A Little Tranquility
by PaintedPetrichor
Summary: Rose and Pearl take time to relax, their troubles off (on) their minds. Follow-up to Giving Her All.


**Follow-up to my previous fic, _Giving Her All_. Please read that first before reading this!**

 **Written for Pearlrose Week 2015 on tumblr (co-hosted by yours truly & the lovely GingerTheSnap!) Visit the pearlroseweek blog to see other great submissions!**

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"Oh _no,"_ Pearl wailed, stretching her frosting-splattered shirt out in front of her. She rushed to turn on the kitchen sink and then stuck her shirt underneath the stream of water.

"Is it coming out?" Rose asked, peering over Pearl's shoulder as she licked chocolate frosting off her fingers.

"No," Pearl sighed, shutting off the tap in defeat. "I just made it worse." She let go of the soaked garment, leaving it to smack against her bare stomach. Pearl wrinkled her nose, and Rose had to stifle a laugh.

"Sorry," Rose said when Pearl glared at her, trying and failing to sober herself. "You're just so cute when you do that." Rose pecked her on the cheek in apology. Pearl kept up her disgruntled expression, but she couldn't keep herself from blushing.

"Tch, that is bad," Rose commented with a click of her tongue. The glob of chocolate frosting that had dripped on Pearl's blouse hadn't rinsed out at all- it had only smudged around into a larger, brownish stain. "Well, maybe if we get it in the wash quickly enough it'll come out," Rose said, taking the edges of Pearl's top and beginning to tug it off.

"Ah!" Pearl cried, pinning down her blouse. "Rose! I don't have anything else to put on!"

"So what? My gran isn't going to be home for hours, it doesn't matter."

Pearl mulled it over for another moment before she held up her arms, allowing Rose to pull the soaked garment over her head and throw it into the washing machine.

"How much more time for the cupcakes?" Rose asked from the laundry room.

"Two minutes," Pearl answered.

"Hmm." On her way back, Rose grabbed a clean spoon and used it to scoop out a spoonful of frosting. "We don't have to frost all of them, right?" she asked.

"We should save enough for _some_ of them," Pearl scolded, holding the bowl away as Rose tried to steal another spoonful.

"Aw, come on," Rose whined playfully. "I had to look all over town just to find soy margarine; I think I deserve as much of this dairy-free frosting as I want."

"I never said you had to do that!" Pearl reminded her. "I've told you, you shouldn't bother trying to make me food to fit all of my dietary restrictions."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Rose said, wrapping an arm around the other girl. "If angel food cake with soy butter frosting is what you like, then I'll make it for you."

"Rose-"

"No butts!" Rose insisted, planting a kiss on Pearl's temple before gently holding the other girl's head against her chest. Rose ran her hand along the side of Pearl's head, the feeling of her newly-shaven undercut still foreign and fascinating to her, but her eyes couldn't keep themselves off of the two scars that crossed in the middle of Pearl's forehead. While the wound hadn't reopened since it had been stitched up the week before, or in the few hours since said stitches had been removed, in Rose's mind it still looked fresh.

"I'm just glad that you're here," Rose said, tightening her embrace, "and not in a hospital, or jail, or-"

"I'm fine," Pearl interrupted, wrapping her own arms around Rose. "Stop worrying about it."

Rose wondered how Pearl could say that so easily, as if getting into an alleyway fight with only a Swiss Army knife hadn't disturbed her the way it had Rose.

Before these thoughts could be vocalized, however, their moment was cut short by the oven timer, which prompted Pearl to slip from their embrace.

"So, when can we frost them?" Rose asked, hovering over the tray of warm cupcakes as Pearl eased them out of the oven and onto the stovetop.

"Forty-five minutes," Pearl replied, carefully plucking each individual cake from the hot pan and plopping them onto the cooling rack. "Maybe an hour?"

"What? _Noooooo,"_ Rose moaned, slumping over the counter with melodramatic flair. "That's much too long!"

"The frosting will just melt off if we do it too soon!" Pearl reminded her.

"I know," Rose said with a sigh.

"Well, didn't you say you got a movie for us to watch? We could do that."

"Oh, right!" Rose straightened back up and dug a brand-new VHS tape, still in its plastic, out from a shopping bag resting on the countertop. "I got us a copy of _Strictly Ballroom!"_

Pearl gasped, abandoning the cupcakes to snatch the tape out of Rose's hands. "Rose, you didn't!"

"I did!" Rose said proudly, watching as Pearl gaped at the film, her free hand shaking in an effort to contain her excitement, before jumping up onto her tiptoes to plant a sudden kiss on Rose's cheek.

"Like it?" Rose asked, voice laced with gentle laughter, relieved to see Pearl acting a bit more like herself. Pearl nodded eagerly, clinging onto Rose's arm and practically dragging her into the living room.

"So, why the bold new hairstyle?"

Pearl, now snuggled up to Rose on the couch as they waited through the previews, reached a hand up to cover the freshly-shaven part of her hair. Since Rose had last seen her, Pearl's hair had been styled into a striking undercut. A sizeable portion of her hair had been clipped down- not enough to leave it feeling prickly under Rose's fingers, but enough so that it exposed only her dark roots, creating an interesting contrast between her hair's natural color and the peach-pink dyed shade of the rest.

"Oh, I really don't know what I was thinking," Pearl said, cringing as she tried to comb the rest of her hair over the more exposed part. "A haphazard attempt at fixing that shaven patch around the stitches, I suppose. It did get a bit out of hand..."

"No, wait," Rose said, butting in to try and smooth Pearl's hair back to how it had been before. "Why are you-"

Pearl sighed. "I know, it's stupid," she confessed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I should've thought about it a _lot_ -"

"You don't like it?"

"-before I even considered..." Pearl paused. She rolled onto her back so she could meet Rose's gaze. "Huh?"

"Well, you must've liked it at some point, right?" Rose reasoned.

"O-oh!" Pearl stammered, reaching to tug at her shirt collar and finding it missing. "Well, I don't really… I mean I suppose you _do_ have a point there…"

"Is that a yes?"

"Ummm... I guess?" Pearl answered, blushing hard enough that she could feel the redness flushing her cheeks.

"Good," Rose said, hugging Pearl tightly as she brought her lips to her ear. "Because I'm already _very_ fond of it."

"Oh!?" Pearl gasped as Rose began leaving a trail of wet kisses along her neck. She broke into a fit of laughter, Rose's lips warm and ticklish against the sensitive skin of her neck. "Ro-o-ose, cut that out!" she sputtered, shoving back against Rose's shoulders.

Rose pulled away. "What?" she asked, hovering over Pearl, a goofy smile plastered across her face.

Pearl, suddenly lost for words, began stumbling for an excuse. "Well, uh, we just started the movie, and-"

"We can pause it, can't we?" Rose suggested, already getting up to stop the DVR.

"Oh, right!" Pearl agreed, eagerly re-situating herself in anticipation before Rose joined her again on the couch. "You're always right," she sighed, in a way that left Rose unsure of whether it had been said in wistfulness or as a sort of resignation. Either way, it prompted her to frown.

"No," Rose told her, leaning in to plant a much-awaited kiss on Pearl's forehead. "Not really."

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 **Thank you for reading, I always appreciate it! Any reviews, whether it be constructive criticism, a question, or a quick comment saying you liked it, would make me the happiest writer this side of the cosmos!**

 **Also available on my tumblr, petrichorpearl, and on AO3 as PaintedPetrichor. Reblogs/likes/kudos there are also appreciated!**


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